Taylor Sheridan’s oil country drama arrives with the level of testosterone and landscape photography that audiences have come to expect from the man behind Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown, and an ever-expanding universe of shows about tough people doing tough things in tough places. Billy Bob Thornton stars as Tommy Norris, a crisis manager for a major oil company in West Texas who spends his days putting out fires, sometimes literally, while his personal life burns just as hot. The show is based on the podcast Boomtown, and it brings that source material’s mix of industry insider knowledge and human drama to the screen with Sheridan’s trademark bluntness.
The reception has been split along predictable lines. Viewers who have enjoyed Sheridan’s other work find Landman to be another satisfying entry in his brand of modern frontier storytelling. Those who have grown weary of that brand find it increasingly difficult to distinguish one show from the next. Both camps tend to agree on one thing: Thornton is worth watching.
Thornton’s Magnetic Weariness
Billy Bob Thornton commands the screen with the ease of someone who has been doing this for decades and still finds new things to show you. Tommy Norris is written as a classic Sheridan protagonist, a man who operates in a world of moral gray areas and speaks in the kind of economical, loaded dialogue that sounds great in a trailer. Thornton takes that blueprint and adds layers that the writing doesn’t always provide. His weariness isn’t performed. It sits in his posture, in the way he holds a phone conversation while scanning a horizon, in the slight delay before he responds to bad news that tells you he’s already calculated three responses and discarded two.
The show’s depiction of the oil industry carries genuine texture. Sheridan has clearly done his research, and the procedural elements of Landman, the drilling operations, the land deals, the regulatory chess matches, have a specificity that grounds the more melodramatic character work. The scenes on the rigs and in the field feel lived-in and dangerous, conveying the physical reality of an industry that most viewers encounter only at the gas pump. When the show focuses on the actual work of extracting oil and managing the human cost of that extraction, it finds its most distinctive voice.
Demi Moore brings a sharp, controlled energy to her role as Tommy’s ex-wife, and their dynamic crackles with the specific resentment that only comes from two people who know each other too well. Jon Hamm, appearing as the oil company’s CEO, brings a corporate menace that contrasts effectively with Thornton’s ground-level pragmatism. The supporting cast fills out a world that feels populated rather than staged, with roughnecks, lawyers, and cartel figures all orbiting Tommy’s perpetually spinning center.
The show’s pacing, particularly in its early episodes, is propulsive. Sheridan knows how to open a series with a hook, and Landman delivers its first crisis with the efficiency of a screenwriter who understands that audiences need a reason to come back. Individual episodes often contain scenes that, in isolation, rank among the most entertaining television of the year.
The Sheridan Formula Shows Its Seams
The central problem with Landman is one that extends across Sheridan’s expanding catalogue: the formula is showing. Tommy Norris fits neatly alongside John Dutton, Mike McLusky, and the other Sheridan protagonists who navigate violent, male-dominated worlds with gruff competence and damaged personal lives. The dialogue, while quotable, follows patterns that loyal viewers can anticipate. The conflicts resolve through confrontations that feel choreographed more than organic. At some point, the machinery behind the entertainment becomes impossible to ignore.
The show’s treatment of its female characters has drawn consistent criticism. While Moore’s role has moments of genuine complexity, several other women in the cast exist primarily in relation to the men around them, defined by their attractiveness, their loyalty, or their capacity to complicate a male character’s arc. Sheridan has faced this criticism before, and Landman doesn’t do much to address it. In a show that asks you to take its world seriously, the flatness of these portrayals undermines the realism it’s reaching for.
The subplot involving cartel activity on the Texas-Mexico border introduces stakes that the show doesn’t fully earn. These scenes feel imported from a different, more violent show, and their connection to the oil industry storyline sometimes stretches thin. The tonal shifts between boardroom negotiations and cartel violence can feel jarring, as though the show can’t decide whether it wants to be a workplace drama or an action thriller and settles for alternating between the two without fully committing to either.
The season’s back half loses some of the propulsive energy of its opening. As plotlines multiply and character arcs demand resolution, the show’s pacing becomes uneven, with some episodes feeling overstuffed and others curiously slack. The finale delivers closure on some fronts but leaves others dangling in a way that feels less like intentional serialization and more like running out of time.
Oil, Money, and the New Western
Sheridan’s most interesting idea in Landman is the parallel between the oil industry and the mythological West. Both involve men imposing their will on the land, both generate enormous wealth alongside enormous destruction, and both cultivate a self-image of rugged individualism that masks deeply corporate interests. The show is at its best when it explores this tension, showing how the romance of the oil field coexists with the cold arithmetic of extraction capitalism.
When Landman leans into this thematic material, it finds territory that feels genuinely fresh. When it retreats into the comfort of familiar Sheridan dynamics, it becomes another competent but interchangeable entry in a brand that may be expanding faster than it’s deepening.
Should You Watch Landman?
If you’ve enjoyed Sheridan’s other shows and you’re drawn to Thornton’s particular brand of charisma, Landman will give you what you’re looking for. The oil industry setting provides enough novelty to distinguish it from Yellowstone, and individual scenes deliver the muscular dialogue and visual grandeur that Sheridan does better than almost anyone working in television. It’s easy to watch and consistently engaging on a surface level.
Skip it if you’ve hit your limit on Sheridan’s formula or if you’re looking for television that treats all of its characters with equal depth and complexity. The show’s strengths are real, but they exist within a framework that’s becoming increasingly familiar, and familiarity in this case doesn’t breed contempt so much as a mild sense of diminishing returns.
The Verdict on Landman
Landman is exactly the show you expect from Taylor Sheridan, for better and worse. Thornton elevates the material with a performance that deserves a more surprising vehicle, the oil country setting provides genuine texture, and individual scenes land with satisfying impact. But the formula that once felt fresh is becoming a template, and Landman doesn’t do enough to break out of it. It’s good television that could be great television if it trusted its setting more and its creator’s habits less.